Deploying the infrastructure

The CloudFormation template that accompanies this lab requires the ability to create IAM Roles and IAM Instance Profiles. If the account you are using does not have these capabilities, you will not be able to complete this lab.

  1. Download the time_test.yaml CloudFormation template to your machine.

  2. This lab assumes you will be deploying to the default VPC within your AWS account. If you wish to deploy to a different VPC, just select the subnet that corresponds to your VPC.

    If you have modified the default VPC or are using a VPC you have created, ensure that the subnet you are deploying the EC2 instances into can communicate with the internet and with AWS Systems Manager. One method for this is to Create a VPC endpoint for SSM

  3. Go to the AWS CloudFormation console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation and click Create Stack > With new resources Images/CFNCreateStackButton

  4. Leave Prepare template setting as-is

    • For Template source select Upload a template file
    • Click Choose file and supply the CloudFormation template you downloaded: time_test.yaml CFNUploadTemplateFile

  5. Click Next

  6. For Stack name use TimeTest

  7. Parameters

    • Look over the Parameters and their default values.

    • Stack Name – Whatever you want to call the stack for this test

    • EC2InstanceSubnetId – The subnet you wish to deploy the 2 EC2 instances into for testing.

    • KVMNodeInstanceType – What size KVM Node (which implies it is a Nitro instance) to use for the test

    • KeyName – SSH keyname to use for the test (in case you want to ssh into the box to run additional tests)

    • LatestAmiId – This will auto-populate with the latest version of the Amazon Linux AMI

    • XenNodeInstanceType – Which non-nitro Xen based node to use for the test

    • Click Next

  8. For Configure stack options we recommend configuring tags, which are key-value pairs, that can help you identify your stacks and the resources they create. For example, enter Owner in the left column which is the key, and your email address in the right column which is the value. We will not use additional permissions or advanced options so click Next. For more information, see Setting AWS CloudFormation Stack Options.

  9. For Review

    • Review the contents of the page
    • At the bottom of the page, select I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources with custom names
    • Click Create stack CFNIamCapabilities

  10. This will take you to the CloudFormation stack status page, showing the stack creation in progress.

    • Click on the Events tab
    • Scroll through the listing. It shows the activities performed by CloudFormation (newest events at top), such as starting to create a resource and then completing the resource creation.
    • Any errors encountered during the creation of the stack will be listed in this tab. StackCreationStarted

  11. When it shows status CREATE_COMPLETE, then you are finished with this step.